Walles T. Edmondson

Walles Thomas Edmondson (April 24, 1916 – January 10, 2000), also known as "Tommy" amongst his peers, was a prominent professor of zoology at the University of Washington. Edmondson was also leading American limnoecologist and writer, whose research focused on the causation and effects of eutrophication by plankton and his early work on rotifer taxonomy from Hispaniola, the Himalayas and lakes across the United States.

Edmondson won the Eminent Ecologist Award in 1983 from the Ecological Society of America.

Personal life

Edmondson was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he would spend much of his youth at Lake Michigan learning about its biology. By 1938, Edmonson completed his B.Sc. from Yale University with eight scientific paper publications, one of which was through Science. Edmondson was known for his unconventional thought process and used many disciplines for his research, much of which included: systematics, fixation methods, and substrate effects. Edmondson continued at Yale to begin and finish his Ph.D. where he would also study at University of Wisconsin and Trout Lake under Chancey Juday.

At Wisconsin, Edmondson would meet Yvette Hardman, who would later become a close colleague and later on become his wife. The two got married in 1941 in Dwight Chapel, New Haven. This was hours after Edmondson completed his preliminary exams for his Ph.D. Edmondson became an oceanographer for the US Navy to aid with the war effort. In 1949, Edmondson and Hardman moved to Washington, where Edmondson would become a professor and teach limnology.